Not sure if this is a troll (if so, well done), but that's not the right way to think about the cost of mining.eric76 said:
Is there any more inefficient method of doing this than how bitcoin does it?
Think about it. For every mined block, 3.125 bitcoins are issued. At the current approximately $61,000 per bitcoin, that is a cost of $190,625 per block. Isn't there something like a megabyte of data per block?
$190,625 per megabyte is ridiculous.
According to one site I found, https://charts.bitbo.io/blocks-daily/ , there is approximately 150 blocks per day. In other words, the cost is $28,593,750 per day! To process and store an additional 150 megabytes of data per day!
That's absurd.
The cost of mining is essentially the cost of contributing hash to the network, which is mostly a function of your power price input and the power efficiency of your mining units.